Always Gold
by littledaybreaker
Summary: What happened between Eddie and Richie at the Town House before the Losers returned to Nieboldt Street for the last time? And what would have happened if Richie and Eddie had opened the "regular scary" door instead of running away? Or; another Fix It Fic for everyone's favorite boys.
1. Chapter 1

When they were young, Eddie slept with a security blanket, a disgusting scrap of blue and white flannel. He'd rub it against his cheek as he was falling asleep, unashamed f it, even at sleepovers. ("The fuck do you care, Richie? I like it, okay?")

Richie is somehow completely unsurprised to learn that he still has it as an adult-now a seasick gray, tattered rectangle of fabric barely bigger than Richie's hand, but somehow instantly recognizable.

"Oh my God, you still _have _that thing?" Dangling it above Eddie's head until he snatches it back, shoving it back under his pillow. "Yes, for your information, I—" he stops, narrows his eyes. "Wait. You remembered it?" he's staring at Richie with a suspicious steeliness and Richie at once feels both defensive and endeared. "So?" he challenges. "This place is making me remember all kinds of shit, you know? Evil clowns, your security blanket, making sweet sweet love to your mom…" and Eddie chucks the blanket at Richie's head.

The truth that he somehow doesn't know how to tell is that he never forgot. Forgot about Derry, yes, and the horrors that unfolded here, but Eddie had remained on his mind, free-floating but there. He couldn't explain why he'd never tried to look him up-couldn't remember that part, but he remembered Eddie.

Remembered the blanket and how he looked when he was falling asleep, mid-sentence, in Richie's twin bed with his Pac-Man sheets, remembered the seemingly endless hours with him, riding bikes or playing Street Fighter or hanging around in one or the other's bedroom or basement or back yard, reading comic books or watching TV or building elaborate Lego fortresses. Remembered, even, how it seemed like all of a sudden something had changed. How all of a sudden he found excuses to stay close to Eddie, to press their shoulders together on the school bus, tangle their legs on the couch, to brush against Eddie's hand accidentally, until eventually the feelings themselves-not to mention their accompanying shame-got to be so much that Richie could barely stand to look at him.

"_What the fuck is your problem?!" Eddie is standing on Richie's lawn, arms folded across his chest, yelling through the open screen door at Richie, who is standing, still in his pajamas, felling rooted in place. "Why the fuck are you avoiding me? Is there something wrong with me?" there's a hint of tears in Eddie's wild, desperate voice, and Richie doesn't give himself time to think about it, flinging the door open and letting it slam behind him ("Richard Tozier, how many times…"), crossing the lawn to grab Eddie's arms, smashing their lips together. He feels Eddie stiffen, then melt against him, and when he pulls back, he's surprised to see Eddie's cheeks wet with tears._

"_I thought you hated me," Eddie is sobbing, rummaging in his fanny pack for his inhaler._

"_Why the fuck would you think that?" Richie replies, genuinely bewildered._

"_Because—" Puff, breathe "-you were afucking avoiding me." Puff, puff, breathe._

"_No." Looking down at their feet, Richie's bare and Eddie's in his New Balances. "I-I'm sorry, Eds." _

"_I _hate _when you call me Eds," Eddie says, and before Richie has time to say anything else, it's Eddie who is grabbing him, mashing their mouths together once more._

Everything was different after that-Richie remembers that, too. The time they spent together seems immeasurable now, and even the usual activities had seemed to take on a quality of magic. In the dark of the movie theater they would lace their fingers together, and then, emboldened by movie magic and the warm dark of the theater itself, hold hands all the way home, standing on Eddie's lawn trading kisses back and forth until the porch light flicked on and Eddie would scramble inside, waving and blowing kisses from his bedroom window.

But something had changed, and there in Eddie's room at the Town House, Richie racks his brain for it until Eddie, seemingly psychically, says, "...my mom."

His mom.

_It's a warm day toward the end of the school year, almost a full year after everything, and somehow, Eddie has convinced his mother to let him put a pup tent in the back yard. That's where he and Richie are now, reading comics and listening to Springsteen, sitting as close together as possible, until the stack of comics is depleted and Richie grins at Eddie, play-wrestling him until he has his hands pinned above his head, straddling his waist, grinning at him before leaning down to kiss him._

_Up until now, their kisses have always been chaste, innocent, but the tent feels like a different world, a world where they can get carried away, and pretty soon they do, tongues tangling, hands fumbling to tug t-shirts off, and then fumbling again to touch all the new skin. _

_Bruce is singing about the Promised Land and Richie has his hand on the button of Eddie's jeans when the zipper of the tent opens without warning and neither of them have time to move._

"_Eddie Bear, I told you it's only good to be in there for half an hour, come ou—EDDIE." _

_It seems like everything stops for a moment, Richie and Eddie frozen in place. "Mommy, it's not—" but she's hauling Richie up, telling him to get out, dragging Eddie out of the tent and into the house, yelling at him all the while that she knew that Richie was a bad influence, filthy, not to be trusted, and no amount of begging or crying on Eddie's part could convince her otherwise._

_That was the last time they would see each other. Eddie's mother pulls him out of school, telling them that he's sick, and then, after six torturous weeks inside, a moving crew pulls up in front of the house and packs up their things and Sonia and Eddie Kaspbrak move to Boston, leaving Derry-and Richie-far behind._

"I remember," Richie says, and reaches to take Eddie's hand. "I'm sorry, Eds. I'm so sorry." He wipes his eyes with the hand that isn't holding Eddie's, taking a shuddering breath."

"It wasn't your fault." Eddie puts a warm, reassuring hand on the back of Richie's neck. "It wasn't anybody's fault. It was…" he trails off, stares into the middle distance. "She was crazy, Richie.. There was nothing we could have done."

It's true, of course-Sonia Kaspbrak _was _crazy-but there's something about hearing Eddie say it that makes Richie shiver. "I never forgot you," he says after a moment. "It's weird, I know, but even when I forgot this place I never forgot you."

Eddie looks over at him, wonderingly, and says, "I used to write you letters."

_In Boston, Sonia's grip only gets tighter. Declared too fragile to return to school, Eddie spends his teenage years inside with a tutor from the school board and a small selection of Sonia-approved friends. All girls, of course, daughters of her church friends._

_As Derry fades out of his memory, so then does Mr Keene and his placebos, Eddie's grip on the idea that his illness was his mother becoming more and more tenuous until he himself believes in his inability to escape it._

_It's one of these girl friends-Lizzie Calloway, with her halo of soft dark curls not unlike Richie's-in whom he first confides (being met with a gale of giggles— "we all know you are, Eddie")-and it's Lizzie Calloway who first puts the idea in his head that he should write._

_Although he never quite figures out where he should send them, he writes, pouring out his heart and talking about his life, confiding there and only there his secret fears, his suspicions and mistrust of his mother. _

"_I feel like there's something that happened to us," he writes in one, "but I couldn't tell you what it is or even why I feel that. Do you even exist at all? I believe in you sure as anything, but why can't I place you or what happened to us before Boston? All I hope is that you and I will meet again and that when I see you again, I'll remember everything. I miss you. I _love _you."_

_He writes even after he meets Myra, after he marries her, replacing one domineering, obsessive hypochondriac with another, although by then, Eddie thinks of his letters to Richie as a sort of a diary more than anything else, somehow convincing himself with no evidence to the contrary that he'd invented this long-lost boy as a sort of totem of what his life could have been._

Richie considers this. "But you saw my routine," he says. "Did it click then?"

"It was weird," Eddie replies, smiling at the memory. "When I saw you, I felt it, instantly, this...thing that woke up in me. But you know, all I said to Myra was that I went to school with you when I was a kid, and you know, my brain let me leave it at that. But my heart knew, somehow."

Richie looks down at their hands and realizes for what he registers as the first time that Eddie isn't wearing a wedding ring. "Do you love her?" he asks suddenly.

Eddie's gaze follows Richie's and then drifts up to his face, looking him in the eyes. "No," he says evenly, and then, "Well, not romantically. On some level I must, but I think I always knew I was just replacing my mother. It wasn't really about anything else."

Richie nods, but finds this so horribly sad that he can't contemplate it and instead abruptly changes the subject. "Did you really know that I didn't write my own shit?"

The mischievous glint in Eddie's eyes comes to him as a relief. "Yeah, of course," Eddie says. "You aren't that fucking funny, Tozier."

"Fuck you!" Richie wrestles him onto the bed and they play fight for a minute or two until Richie pins Eddie's hands and Eddie moans and it's all over.

Neither of them have done this before, but somehow it all feels like sense memory: undressing each other, kissing all the exposed skin, knowing all the places to touch. Richie pushes into Eddie like he's done it a million times before and Eddie accepts him like his body was made just for this-just for him. Even Eddie's orgasm feels familiar to him-feels, Richie registers, like coming home.

When they're finished, collapsed on the bed and panting, Eddie wraps his arms around Richie's neck and breathes, "Don't leave me."

Richie pulls him closer, protective, and promises: "never."

In the morning, Richie wakes up with a sick feeling in his stomach because he knows that everything is about to change. But there's Eddie, asleep next to him, stupid scrap of flannel up by his face and he has a momentary flash of recognition. If they do this, and they survive, isn't it worth it for another fifty or so years with Eddie? Because, even though it's unspoken, he feels like the undeniable truth of this situation is that if they're walking out of here, they're walking out together. And that's enough, isn't it?

By the time they're in the house on Nieboldt street, it already feels like the longest day they've ever had. Longer, somehow, than the first time, with more riding on it, and by the time they're confronted with the doors Eddie is pretty sure he's never felt more defeated. His face hurts, his inhaler is gone, and now they have to solve some stupid riddle. What he really wants is a hot shower, a return trip to Keene's, and to get into bed and cry for a month.

There's a brief scuffling argument and then the first of two doors, then the second (scarier than the first, arguably), and they're about to take off running when Richie, in a burst of determination, pulls open the third door.

"This is my apartment," he says, puzzled. And it is, but there's just enough differences for him to know that something is up. It's cleaner, for one thing. All the furniture matches. His eyes can around and fall on the framed pictures-him and Eddie as kids. On a beach, his arms around Eddie's shoulders. In matching tuxes, smiling at each other. The pomeranian is now asleep in a dog bed, a fat house cat napping on the windowsill. There's an inhaler on an end table. Eddie and Richie exchange looks.

"Doesn't seem all that scary to me," Eddie says.

"What, spending the rest of my life with you? I'll take the evil pomeranian, thanks," Richie jokes, earning himself a (deserved) punch on the arm.

It's only when they start down the hallway that the nightmare becomes clear.

There's Myra, calling at all hours, pleading with Eddie to come back. There's the awful divorce where she follows him from the courtroom threatening to kill herself. There's hecklers at Richie's shows, screaming 'fag'. There's cancelled bookings and people boycotting his specials, and there, at the end, is the clown.

"Richie, Richie, Richie," he says, leering at them.

Richie takes a step back, shoving Eddie behind him protectively.

"Wasn't it better before that little secret came out?" the clown asks, licking his horrible lips. "Wouldn't you rather shove this far, far away where it belongs?"

Richie wavers. It's Eddie who reacts, wielding his broken fencepost. "Fuck you, NO!" he howls, lunging forward. "Fuck you, mommy! Fuck you, Myra! Fuck you, clown! I love him and you can't stop me, so _FUCK YOU ALL!" _

Surprised, the clown draws back. Behind him, there's the light of the exit. Richie, temporarily dumbfounded in his amazement, pressing a triumphant kiss to Eddie's mouth before dragging him towards the freedom of the light.

When it's all over again, the Losers once again find themselves in the Barrens-in the water, despite Eddie's protests.

"You know," Bev says, glancing at their intertwined hands. "I always knew you'd end up together."

"Yeah, cause you saw it," Eddie replies, and she shakes her head. "Even before that. It just seemed inevitable. Like you were made to be that way."

Richie and Eddie exchange glances, smiling. "You know," Richie says, thinking back to the house on Nieboldt street, back even to the Town House the night before, "I think we were, too."

Back in the room at the Town House, Eddie opens the safe and hands Richie a Buster Brown shoebox, worn and faded from so many openings and closings. "What is it?" Richie asks, even though he knows perfectly well.

"Open it," says Eddie, and when Richie does, there they are, every letter Eddie ever wrote, addressed to Richie in his careful handwriting. Richie swallows back his tears, looks up at Eddie with his eyes shining. "I have to show you something," he says, "Let's get going."

On the Kissing Bridge he locates it instantly, sense memory still strong after all these years. "I did it that summer," he explains, almost shyly, "When we were all apart."

"I love you," Eddie says, tracing the letters with his fingertips. "Holy fuck do I ever love you."

"I love you," Richie replies, taking the knife from his pocket, carving the letters out afresh. _Someday, _he thinks, _We'll bring our kids out here. Show them where it all began._

Finished, he rises to his feet, taking Eddie's hand. They get back into the car and leave Derry in the rearview mirror, Springsteen coming through the radio: _If i could take one moment into my hands, Mister, I ain't a boy, no, I'm a man, and I believe in the promised land." _


	2. The Ending where Eddie Dies

At the funeral, Myra hands Richie a box. "This is for you," she says coldly, and then leaves before Richie has the chance to thank her.

He leaves it shut and carefully taped in the front seat of his car the entire six hour drive back to Derry, keeps it as he drives past his old house, past Eddie's, past the vacant lot that had been Eddie Kaspbrak's final resting place, keeps it shut until he reaches the Kissing Bridge. There, with his back pressed against their carved initials, he finally, carefully, removes the lid.

The blanket is on top, folded carefully in a Ziploc bag. Richie's breath catches for a moment and he opens the bag, breathing in Eddie's scent-clean and vaguely medicinal, a hint of Irish spring-holding and rubbing it against his cheek as he begins to read.

_Dear Richie,_

_This is such bullshit. I miss you. But don't worry. I'll get out of Mom Jail eventually and we can be together again. I'll always find a way to be with you._

_Love,_

_Eds. _

He sits and reads, one right after the other, until his back aches and the light is dying, and when he gets up, lid firmly on the box, he brings the blanket to his lips. "I miss you, Eds," he says, getting back into the car, the blanket still in his hand as he leaves Derry in the rear view mirror for the last time.


End file.
